The Role of Currently Married Men in Family Planning and its Associated Factors in Agaro Town, South West Ethiopia

Author(s):

Tadele Girum Adal*

Introduction: Involving men and obtaining their support and commitment to family planning is of crucial importance particularly in developing nations like Africa region, in which the role of male in decision making is high. There for this study aimed to assess the role of men in family planning and its associated factors in Agaro town, sowt west Ethiopia, which will be used as area of intervention in the health care. Methods: A community based quantitative cross-sectional study was conducted among 391 randomly selected married men. The data was collected by face-to-face interview using pre-tested structured questionnaire. Data was entered by EPI INFO and analyzed by SPSS version 20.0. Adjusted odds ratio and its confidence interval were used to signify association. Results: About 96% of the respondents heard about family planning, 291 (74.4%) of married men discussed and 303 (77.5%) of the married men approve the use of family planning with prevalence of 275 (70.3%) and less than 8% of the respondent used male method. Adjusting for other variables Literate men (AOR= 1.5, 95% CI=1.04-3.15), Men having 3 or more currently living children (AOR= 2.6, 95% CI=1.56-3.66), having discussion in last one year (AOR= 2.9, 95% CI=1.67-4.72), positive Attitude towards male contraceptive use (AOR= 1.8, 95% CI=1.2-3.2), Help and approval for Contraceptive use (AOR= 3.4, 95% CI=1.57- 7.43) were significantly increased the use of family planning. On the other hand desired to have more children (AOR= .46, 95% CI=.28-.75) reduced the odds of current use. Conclusion and recommendation: The study found high prevalence of knowledge of family planning methods, improvement of men role, high family planning method utilization by married women and low utilization rate of male method. Advocacy programs need to be improved to participate male in family planning.